Replacing DVD drive with another one

[Kipperdesign]

Hello all,

I was just wondering. My Macbook Pro is starting to slowly but surely feel its age (late 2008). Now since Apple never wanted to do it and my warranty is off anyways I really REALLY would love to exchange my internal DVD drive with a newer, better working one.

I'm pretty sure theres a lot of people having the issue of a good 2/3 of discs not even start burning or getting spit out somewhere half way due to the poor (or shall I say cheap?) drives used by Apple. Since recently it now won't even read burned discs no more and simply display them as empty and burnable... UCK!

I recently decided to upgrade (instead of buying a new one) my MBP. So far I've stuffed in additional RAM along with an SSD drive and as a next step I'd really like to exchange my drive for a better one.

However I couldn't really find anything smart or trustworthy on the web, so I thought I'd ask here as I'm pretty sure there's a lot of people here who know what they're doing

I know there's the possibility of getting external drives but I would really prefer it to be inside as I do travel a lot with it. However if you say it's not possible I guess it's time to replace my ODD with another SSD

Thanks in advance for the people that'll take time to answer.

Cheers,

KD

 

[ljonesj]

Well i found out something odd that i done with my dvd drive in my mac mini. It started acting up i took it out took its top cover off. Got a pan and isopropyl alcohol and soaked the drive in it for about 10 min. Then took it out with a q tip cleaned the laser lens and then let sit for about a day to dry. I then reinstalled it in the mac mini and tried the movies it stopped reading for the last 3 weeks its been quite it was getting loud and it reads movies fine again.

 

[Kipperdesign]

If cleaning the lens would resolve the problem I believe using a trustworthy cleaning disc would resolve the problem no?

To be honest I' a little paranoid destroying it completely by soaking it in isopropyl alcohol

 

[Bear]

If cleaning the lens would resolve the problem I believe using a trustworthy cleaning disc would resolve the problem no?

To be honest I' a little paranoid destroying it completely by soaking it in isopropyl alcohol

Soaking the whole drive does sound a little extreme to me as well. ALthough I can see the necessity of hand cleaning the lens as cleaning discs really can't do a good job. And drive lasers do wear out, however, trying to clean it first doesn't really cost much.

You should be able to get a replacement internal optical drive for your MBP. Otherworld Computing is one place to check.